Re: HSBC Aided Money-Laundering by Iran, Drug Cartels, Probe Shows

Originally Posted by Captain Con O'Sullivan

Sooner or later someone looking suitably discomfited will appear on the news, mouth perhaps half-open to inform us that major European banks have been laundering drug, extortion and prostitution racket money for Eastern European 'wealth creators' for some years now since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Which I, as you can see from any number of threads on banking on this forum, have been alleging for at least a couple of years now.

ING were busted for the same thing recently, laundering cocaine money on an industrial scale for Mexican drug lords.

The boards of these banks will be awfully, awfully, appalled to hear that. Basically when you look at some of the major banking groups in the west you are looking at the front office for organised crime definitely in Russia and eastern Europe. There has been a pipeline via Croatia and Albania for example for years washing money through and into the western European banking system via 'private wealth funds' in tax havens and via places like Austria and Luxembourg. Other tax havens are used in the Caymans and Bermuda for example through subsidiaries of these mittel-European banks.

They've been laundering for the mafia for decades- why should Russian criminals be any different?

Re: HSBC Aided Money-Laundering by Iran, Drug Cartels, Probe Shows

Good to see that Noonan has complete confidence in former HSBC executives David Hodgkinson, now AIB chairman, and Mike Geoghegan, who was first asked to carry out a review of NAMA by Noonan and then asked to chair an advisory board.

The Minister said he was “quite comfortable” with Mr Geoghegan’s advice on Nama, which he provides on a “pro-bono basis”.

“I am quite comfortable that he should continue in that role and there is nothing in that report in the United States that would make me change that position,” said Mr Noonan, who was speaking at the launch of the National Treasury Management Agency’s report for 2011.

In the report, HSBC was found to have “systematically” concealed thousands of US dollar transactions involving Iranian banks that should have been automatically flagged and subsequently scrutinised, to gauge whether they complied with US law.

The US Senate report outlines how these practices occurred over a six-year period up to 2007, even though senior executives – including Hodgkinson and Geoghegan – were made aware of their questionable legality.

“From at least 2001 to 2007, two HSBC affiliates, HSBC Europe and HSBC Middle East, repeatedly sent U-turn transactions through HBUS without disclosing links to Iran, even though they knew HBUS required full transparency to process U-turns,” the report, released earlier this week, said.

Mr Hodgkinson served as deputy chairman at HSBC’s operation in the Middle East at the time, and corresponded with Mr Geoghegan – then chief executive – in relation to the bank’s Iranian business.

On one such occasion, in June 2004, Mr Hodgkinson emailed Mr Geoghegan asking for his “intervention and support” in “positively resolving the long-standing issue”, while noting Iran’s “significant strategic importance” to the bank.

Re: HSBC Aided Money-Laundering by Iran, Drug Cartels, Probe Shows

The western banking system has been corrupt for quite a long time but it is only since the Berlin Wall came down that they started working on behalf of Russian gangsters.

There was always banking corruption by the mafia in Italy (Italy is pretty much a mafia state and has been since World War II) but the entire western banking system is now rotten with criminal money, much of it being washed through the west via bondholdings by 'private wealth funds' behind nominee accounts in Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and other 'constitutional confidentiality' havens.

I doubt there is a major bank in western Europe that doesn't have ties to organised crime at this stage.

Think National. Act Local. Oh- and superstition is just the dark matter of human history.

Re: HSBC Aided Money-Laundering by Iran, Drug Cartels, Probe Shows

HSBC to pay at least $1,900,000,000 in fines related to money laundering

According to the official, the bank will pay $1.25 billion in forfeiture and pay $655 million in civil penalties. The $1.25 billion figure is the largest forfeiture ever in a case involving a bank. Under what is known as a deferred prosecution agreement, the bank will be accused of violating the Bank Secrecy Act and the Trading With the Enemy Act.

Re: HSBC Aided Money-Laundering by Iran, Drug Cartels, Probe Shows

Originally Posted by PaddyJoe

Michael Geoghegan, former chief executive of HSBC, was appointed to the NAMA advisory board by Noonan in December 2011.
David Hodgkinson, AIB chairman, was CEO of HSBC until the end of 2008, and was appointed to AIB by Lenihan in October 2010.

Would be interesting to hear what these chaps have to say on the record fines for money laundering imposed on HSBC by the US authorities.

(Reuters) - HSBC Holdings Plc agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion in fines to U.S. authorities for allowing itself to be used to launder a river of drug money flowing out of Mexico and other banking lapses.
Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel between them laundered $881 million through HSBC and a Mexican unit, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

In a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, the bank acknowledged it failed to maintain an effective program against money laundering and failed to conduct basic due diligence on some of its account holders.